On the long-running TV show M*A*S*H, Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly attempted to mail home a U.S. Army jeep one part at a time. There is no doubt that some service members have tried to carry out similar endeavors. The Department of Defense has long documented problems with missing parts, including other materiel.
However, one U.S. Army officer may have pressed his luck after being arrested and charged with selling stolen items from Fort Stewart, Georgia. Capt. Jacob Suenkel, 32, pleaded guilty this month and is now awaiting sentencing.
“The stolen equipment included costly items such as skid-steer loaders, UTVs, trailers, generators, welders, commercial grade hand tools, and a tractor. After stealing these items, Suenkel would then market them for sale on social media and sell them to unsuspecting buyers,” the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Among the most costly items was a Bobcat skid-steer tractor, which court documents valued between $30,000 and $80,000 depending on the size. It was sold just four days after the theft for $22,000 via the Facebook Marketplace.
As part of a plea agreement, Suenkel admitted that the items were valued at more than $150,000. He produced an initial payment of $50,000, which will go toward the monetary component of any sentence imposed. He will be discharged from the Army and lose any veterans’ benefits.
He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while he will be ordered to pay restitution to the victims of his crimes.
“Stealing from the Army isn’t simply about lost property; it’s a matter of national security and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” said Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division, Southeast Field Office, Special Agent in Charge Ryan O’Connor. “The Army CID, Fort Stewart Resident Agency, was instrumental in the recovery of the stolen equipment and securing this prosecution. Suenkel betrayed not only the U.S. Army, but also the trust placed in him by the American people.”
Missing Materiel – Some Stolen, Others Just Misplaced!
It is unclear whether Suenkel assumed that the U.S. Army would overlook a missing Bobcat and other items. Still, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2023 warned that more than one million F-35 Lightning II parts, valued at more than $85 million, had gone missing over a five-year period.
That doesn’t mean that enterprising service members stole the parts; many could simply be sitting in the global spares pool. The issue was due to the lack of an adequate tracking system for the parts. Disagreements between Pentagon officials and the aircraft’s prime contractor, defense giant Lockheed Martin, over how to categorize the parts have further delayed efforts to create a reliable system for tracking the parts, the watchdog group warned.
Even as the F-35 parts are missing, in 2018, the U.S. Navy discovered parts for the now-retired F-14 Tomcats in warehouses in Jackson, Florida. According to multiple reports, not only was finding the warehouse full of parts for the aircraft an unexpected surprise, but Navy officials also did not know about the warehouse.
How the service “forgot” about the building is unclear, but it was full of parts for the F-14, as well as for the P-8 Poseidon and P-3 Orion submarine-hunting aircraft. The parts were worth up to $126 million and were only discovered when the Department of the Navy carried out a long-overdue audit.
It should be added that the Pentagon had previously gone to great lengths to destroy its stocks of F-14 Tomcat parts when the aircraft was retired more than a decade earlier, as Iran still operated the fighter. Washington went to great lengths to ensure that parts for the aircraft couldn’t be sold on the gray market and somehow make their way to the Islamic Republic.
That wasn’t really just a case of paranoia.
In 1985, a group of smugglers was caught attempting to sell F-14 parts to Iran, which led the Department of Defense to initiate an audit of spare parts stored on its aircraft carriers. It was found then that the auditors had lost track of nearly $400 million in parts.
Guns and More Stolen
In terms of stolen items, a Bobcat may be the least of the Pentagon’s worries, at least according to a 2021 report from The Associated Press, which warned that a case of 40mm grenades was stolen from a U.S. military arsenal, while over a decade ago, a couple of hundred firearms had also vanished.
That included such weapons as the M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun, which were weapons stolen and then sold to street gangs and even the Mexican drug cartels.
It could be worse, however.
Twice in the past four decades, the U.S. has seen a tank stolen. The first was in 1982 when a U.S. soldier stationed in Germany stole an M60 tank and drove it through the city of Mannheim, before it fell off a bridge killing the individual. In 1995, a U.S. Army veteran stole another M60 tank from a California National Guard armory and went on a destructive rampage through San Diego.
Finally, during the Cold War, the United States lost six nuclear weapons during training exercises. Fortunately most are somewhere deep in the ocean, and the weapons of mass destruction are unlikely to be found.
